He did not say why this is bad, so I am intrigued about this advice. I have never heard this advice given before.I use a card reader out of personal convenience, but why should you never connect the camera?

HiDoes Light Room see your card reader, or is your card reader unable to read the SD card that your camera uses? My card reader doesn't support the newer SD cards, so I have to connect the camera when using the newer card.The only issue I've run into by using the camera to import files, is a speed issue.The card reader is quite a bit faster,not to mention handier. Of course you have to wait until the import is finished to shoot with your camera, so that makes it inconvenient as well.Hope this helpsGerry

He did not say why this is bad, so I am intrigued about this advice. I have never heard this advice given before.I use a card reader out of personal convenience, but why should you never connect the camera?

When USB ports fail it's usually upon connection or disconnection from the computer. Every time you plug or unplug, there's a chance of a zzzzap frying something. If it's your unlucky day, it's far better to have zapped a reader that can be replaced at relatively low cost than it is to zap a camera costing hundreds of dollars to repair.

Not only that, but cameras were designed to write image data to cards. Cameras were never designed to transfer data from cards to computers. Yes, you can do it, but if you plug in your camera to your computer for file transfer you may as well go and watch the molasses races. And yes, if you have a newer camera and, say, and SDHC or SDXC card, an older card reader likely won't recognize it.

Mike.

Logged

If your mind is attuned to beauty, you find beauty in everything.~ Jean Cooke ~

Herein lies the problem; I have been looking at the instruction manuals over the last few days for as many cameras as I can get hold of, from cheap point and shoot to top end Canon.

Every one explains how to use the software on the supplied disc to transfer the files on to the camera using the supplied USB cable. There is no warning of any of the issues reported in the other posts.

The average user has never heard of any issues caused by tethering the camera to download images.